12 YEARS OF MODERN SLAVERY : the smokescreen used to deflect state accountability for migrant domestic workers
Author’s Note
This report is for migrant domestic workers in the UK. It is designed to assist with their individual as well as collective advocacy when continuing their campaign to see their rights restored.
Migrant domestic workers are overwhelmingly female and account for 73% of migrants working in private households globally.1 Working in foreign lands under laws set by foreign governments, some of these rules are extreme, making these workers who are already inherently vulnerable, even more exposed to exploitative working practices.
These workers carry out essential work. They enable households and communities across the UK and globally to carry out their daily lives, helping parents, the elderly, the disabled and many more. Their work enables other work to take place and is often described as the backbone of society.
Despite their crucial role, this workforce is often stigmatised, discriminated against and their work demeaned and devalued. In the UK, migrant domestic workers are considered low- skilled and seemingly not worthy of the rights that other migrant workers enjoy, including rights that would ensure their safety at work.
For the past 12 years, migrant domestic workers have been subjected to exploitation, trapped working for abusive employers and left with no options to seek redress or safety. Unless their treatment meets the legal definition of trafficking or modern slavery, these workers fall into a gap in the UK’s protection measures where they are entirely hidden from view and at high risk of being preyed upon by unscrupulous employers looking to exploit their drive to provide for their loved ones.
This report aims to scrutinise and dismantle the myths the previous Government relied on when they defeated calls made by workers and their supporters to have rights at work to ensure their safety. In so doing we endeavour to demonstrate clearly and unequivocally how the legislative and policy framework has put workers at risk for the past 12 years.
I hope this report will serve to assist workers in their tireless campaigning to have their rights as workers fully restored. Kalayaan will continue to work alongside you until they are. Everyone should be safe in their workplaces.
That must be a universal right for everyone.